Lead Platform Engineer

About Hachiko

Join us in building the software platform that's accelerating the renewable energy transition, one battery at a time. We're unlocking the C&I sector's storage potential through a combination of
energy expertise

,
mathematical optimisation

,
software engineering excellence

, and an
unwavering commitment to customer success

.

Our vision is a
world where human thriving and a flourishing natural environment are not mutually exclusive

. To get there, we empower battery developers, owners, and traders to unlock the full potential of energy storage portfolios and deliver market-leading returns.

We're a small, high-calibre technical team building distributed, event-driven systems that simulate, operate, and optimise real-world energy systems. We value epistemic humility, fast feedback, and continuous improvement. We build services that are reactive, resilient, and evolvable. And we're looking for someone to own and shape our cloud infrastructure foundation as we scale.

The time to act is now. Come and join us.

About the role

You'll be our
first dedicated platform engineer

: the sole owner of our infrastructure and SRE domain. This is a high-autonomy, high-impact individual contributor role on a platform/enabling team (using Team Topologies nomenclature). Your mission is to build a solid foundation that lets our stream-aligned teams focus on building products.

This isn't a support role. You'll
own the infrastructure space

, shape our cloud strategy, and create the tooling and patterns that enable engineering teams to self-serve safely and efficiently. We need someone opinionated who can design systems for scale, security, and operational excellence, while making those systems easy to use and hard to misuse.

What you'll own

• Infrastructure-as-Code Strategy

: Evaluate and consolidate our IaC approach.
- Cloud Infrastructure & Production Readiness

: Design, provision, and evolve our AWS environments with infrastructure-as-code at the foundation.
- Observability & Reliability Engineering

: Enable the team to instrument effectively, debug incidents, and monitor system health.
- Security & Compliance

: Build security controls, audit logging, and compliance-ready infrastructure patterns. Prepare the foundation for ISO certification and other compliance requirements.
- Platform Enablement

: Create self-service tooling, contribution models, and paved paths that let application engineers deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot independently.
- Cost & Governance

: Shape infrastructure choices that balance cost efficiency, security, and developer velocity.

You'll work closely with our 4-person technical team, with
agency to design and build

the infrastructure foundation that enables them to move faster. We're looking for someone who shapes options and builds guardrails, not gatekeepers who restrict choices. Think strategically, execute tactically, and collaborate constantly.

What you'll work with

Cloud & Infrastructure:

AWS, IaC tooling, TimescaleDB, Kafka, Kubernetes, and ECS Fargate

Languages & Frameworks:

Go, Python, TypeScript, Protobuf

Observability & Tooling:

DataDog, OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, Grafana, GitHub Actions

We don't expect you to know all of this, but experience with the fundamentals (containers, Kubernetes, IaC, event-driven systems, observability) is essential.

About you

We're after people who embody our values: brevity, empathy, honesty, decisiveness, excellence, and humility. 

In summary, we're looking for someone who:

• Fits our culture (effective, curious, humble. Not a kn*bhead, not a hero)
• Aligns with our mission (renewable energy transition matters to you)
• Has the technical chops (proven cloud/platform engineering experience)

You're probably
not

a great fit if:

• You need a large team or extensive mentorship to be effective.
• You prefer following established playbooks over writing new ones.
• You see infrastructure as a support function, not a product.
• You're not comfortable writing code.
• You value perfection over pragmatism, or can't balance long-term vision with short-term delivery.
• You're uncomfortable making decisions with incomplete information.
• You're looking for a cruisy gig.

Must-haves

• 7+ years building and operating cloud infrastructure in production environments.
• Deep cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure. We're AWS-based, but strong cloud fundamentals matter more than vendor specifics).
• Container runtime expertise (Kubernetes preferred, but other orchestration platforms count if you understand the fundamentals).
• Infrastructure-as-Code fluency (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, or equivalents)
• Observability-driven mindset: You instrument first, debug with metrics/logs/traces, and believe observability is a first-class concern.
• Security & compliance awareness: You understand IAM, Principle of Least Privilege, audit logging, and how to build compliant-by-default systems.
• Scripting & automation: Comfortable writing Go, Python, or similar to build internal tooling and eliminate toil.
• Production operations experience: You've been on call, debugged incidents under pressure, and know what "fail gracefully" really means.

Strong preferences

• Experience building self-service platforms for engineering teams (paved paths, golden paths, internal developer platforms)
• Background in high-availability, distributed systems (you understand CAP theorem, eventual consistency, circuit breakers, backpressure)
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures (Kafka, Kinesis, queues, pub/sub patterns)
• Knowledge of cost optimisation strategies for cloud infrastructure
• Experience with compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, SOC 2, or similar)
• Comfort working in early-stage or scale-up environments where you define the playbook, not follow it

What we offer

Impact

• Own an entire domain in a high-growth, mission-driven company accelerating the renewable energy transition with proven traction
• Shape and own cloud infrastructure strategy from the ground up with significant autonomy and agency

Team & culture

• High-trust, high-agency environment. We hire adults and treat them like adults.
• Work with a small, world-class engineering team that values thoughtful design and collaboration.
• Engineering values grounded in epistemic humility, fast feedback, and continuous improvement.
• Blameless culture that treats incidents as learning opportunities, not finger-pointing exercises.
• A team with domain expertise across all areas of the product, true traction with customers, and a huge addressable market.

Growth & learning

• Broad surface area: you'll touch infrastructure, observability, security, compliance, cost optimisation, and developer experience.
• Work on hard problems in energy optimisation, distributed systems, and real-time event processing.
• Room to experiment with new tools and approaches (within pragmatic boundaries).
• As an early hire, an opportunity to shape the future of Hachiko.

Work environment

• Primarily remote with regular in-person sessions in Sydney. We care about outcomes, not face time. For the right candidate, we will accept applications from outside Sydney, but expect in-person contact at a reasonable agreed frequency.
• Flexible arrangements: This is a full-time role. However, we are open to part-time options for the right candidate. We value impact over rigid schedules.
• Climate tech impact: Work on technology that directly accelerates grid decarbonisation and the renewable energy transition.
• Small team, high impact: Low bureaucracy, fast decisions, and direct influence on product and technical direction.

How to apply

To apply, send the following to

with the subject "Lead Platform Engineer - ":

• Your resume or LinkedIn profile
• A short note (2-3 paragraphs) answering:
• What excites you about this role and Hachiko's mission?
• Describe a time you built infrastructure or tooling that enabled other engineers to move faster. What did you build, and what was the impact?
• What's your approach to balancing "build it right" vs. "build it now" in early-stage environments?

We value clarity and brevity. If you can't explain your work simply, we're probably not a fit.

Note - applicants must have full rights to live and work in Australia.